Monthly Archives: February 2013

There seem to have been so many birthdays recently which means a non stop supply of cake!

I made a marble cake this weekend by following this BBC good food recipe. Although I enjoy the process of making a cake, mixing all the ingredients together (its quite therapeutic), I think I most enjoy receiving compliments! When my baking turns out good, its marvellous but when its bad, thats where I think having a dog would come in handy! There is no middle ground?!

I tried to save a bit of time by doing exactly what the instructions said…

“If you want to make life easy, simply put all the ingredients (except the cocoa powder) into a food processor and whizz for 1-2 mins until smooth.”

How wrong I was to do this! After about 5 mins of “whizzing” my ingredients were not fully mixed and attempting to transfer the ingredients into a bowl so I could mix by hand was proving difficult. All my ingredients got stuck to the sides of the mixer and I had a mission trying to get it all out (I hate wasting stuff!) Every time I bake, I do something new (and stupid) and think “why did I do that?!” Panic over as my cake mixture smelt and tasted good.

Whenever making marble cake, I split the mixture into half and add cocoa powder to it then mix back in with the plain mixture. But I always feel tempted to have the ratio of chocolate : plain to about 70 : 30! Which meant I had to leave some of the chocolate out otherwise I was in danger of ending up with a pure chocolate cake.

Cake going in oven

Cake coming out of oven

I added decorations by melting white chocolate and spreading it all over the cake (less sickly than icing) and sticking wafer biscuits around the top. Im always apprehensive when people eat my food because, a) I know how fussy I am, b) my family are a critical lot and not afraid to voice their opinion and c) everyone has different tastes and ideas of whats nice. Saying that, I got compliments all round, which always makes it worthwhile.

Final decorated birthday marble cake

No doubt I will be baking something similar again for my dads birthday as he loves marble cake too. Whats your favourite cake?